


Fish in the Jailhouse

by PepperCat



Series: Velvet Detonation [1]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Axel is an unreliable narrator, Axel is good at picking fights, Betrayal, Bombs, Character Study, Cigarettes, Denial of Feelings, Desperation, Guilt, Guns, Handcuffs, Implied/Referenced Sex, Iron Heights, Knives, Loneliness, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-Graphic Violence, Prison, Self-Harm, Solitary Confinement, Touch-Starved, and the devil's luck, assuming you can use that word when the relationship wasn't very strong to begin with, family devotion, memories fuzzy and details lost, please let me know if I missed anything, the tags probably make it sound more dramatic than it is, third-party threats of rape/non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:22:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PepperCat/pseuds/PepperCat
Summary: James Jesse went back to maximum security, and got out at least once more. What about Axel Walker?Begins after the s1e17 episode "Tricksters".





	1. Chapter 1

Jesse is in maximum security. Axel is not. He hasn't done _nothing_ , but he hasn't done _much_. Not by comparison.

Iron Heights is not pleasant.

Axel's heard other people in prison get pissy if you hurt kids. He's never really believed it. He will allow that parents can care if their kids get hurt, that sometimes happens, but that's pretty much it. In his experience, _no-one_ really objects to kids getting hurt unless it's loud and public on their watch or unless they're getting paid to object (and the people getting paid to object do a half-assed job at best).

But the thing, the dropping exploding presents on a park full of toddling moppets thing, before Jesse even got out? Yeah. That was loud and public, and apparently the guys in Iron Heights are bored enough that _loud and public_ is all it takes for them to object.

Axel's pretty sure most of them are just looking for an excuse to beat someone up without the guards stepping in right away, but that doesn't make the hits land any softer.

It hurts. Axel can get himself through your basic brawl but the odds are just a little too high in this one, and around the second blow to the head he gets a little floaty, and while his brain is wandering in a slow loop it goes back to the the really _important_ thing, the thing that he started realizing when the Flash came back into City Hall on that poison-yellow streak of lightning, the thing that's been filling up his head through processing and trial and transport and now this--

He fucked up. This is his fault.

 _He_ was supposed to get the wristbomb ready. Jesse looked it over and tweaked it a little, sure--Axel has been holding himself together at night with the memory of that, that golden giddy moment when he was actually in the same room as _James Jesse_ \--but it had been Axel's job to get things in place before then so they could hit the ground running.

And then the fucking thing didn't _work_.

It's not that it went off and the Flash powered through it. Axel saw the fight at Porter and Main same as everyone, and what he took away from that is that the bomb needed to work on someone who took hits from a gun that sets roads on fire and was zipping around again a couple of days later. He built something that should have _at least_ taken that guy's hand off, but there wasn't a scratch on him when he came back to City Hall.

He got it off somehow.

Axel can't figure that one out.

Industrial cutting torch could maybe have gotten it off without it blowing, _if_ someone knew what they were doing, but you can't really carry those around to use one-handed on _yourself_ and there's no way the Flash could have held still for long enough to let someone else do it without it going off.

Maybe it was the lightning. He doesn't think so--the guy doesn't leave lightning-strike scorch marks when he runs, people he picks up aren't burned, but... maybe it was the lightning? Fried the circuits, killed the speedometer, disintegrated the fuse, did it all while just happening to miss every watchdog switch Axel thought he'd built in...

Sure.

(If the Flash is _that_ lucky Axel knows why he isn't out robbing banks. He bought a lottery ticket and hasn't had to work a day since. Goes out ruining people's time with their dads for a fucking hobby instead.)

He laughs at the thought, not a happy laugh, and there's blood running around his mouth making it taste funny and when he tries to wipe it away he can't because someone behind him is holding his arms. That explains how it got so bad, you're kind of fucked if you can't get your guard up. He spits instead and shakes his head, and things clear enough for him to understand someone's asking him something, _what about_ , he's not sure of the details. But asking means they might stop long enough for him to answer and he just comes out with the last thing in his head.

"Hobbies," he says. "An active mind is a healthy mind." He laughs again, and it hurts, his side is killing him and if he wasn't being held up he'd have hit the stage where you curl up on the ground and pray they get in each other's way, hurry up and get bored. "My dad said--"

Starburst and everything he sees is whiting out, his nose is running blood. His ears are ringing but he can make out a really fucking uncreative insult and then someone saying something about putting him down. One of his arms gets let go and he finds out he can't actually stay on his feet, ends up on his knees with one hand on the floor and the other up too high behind his back.

He's expecting it to get broken but it doesn't.

The guy behind him--one of the guys behind him?--is saying a name. Allen. Axel isn't sure if he's seeing double or if there's someone else who wants to get in on the beatdown.

Allen. Allen?

\--oh, _fuck_ , Allen. The old guy who said those things about Jesse, the cop's dad who should've been full of knives. Axel tries to get off his knees and can't, and someone's laughing, but no-one's hitting. And there's a conversation going on _about_ him but not to him, he hates those, those are _never_ any fucking good, get up, get with it, think--

"--made your point. Let me get him to the infirmary."

And now he's imagining things. Head trauma. He _hopes_ it's the head trauma, he's sure he wasn't doing this earlier, but maybe if he was and didn't notice it could explain how the hell he fucked up with the wristbomb, it's not an excuse but at least he'd _know_ \--

"Christ, Allen, you'd really step in for this freak?"

"You know me, Parker." Allen's shrugging like it's just a little thing, and everyone's looking at him. Axel spits out a little more blood, tries to catch up. "Look, he's not getting out of here. But if you hurt him any worse, you _will_ end up in solitary, or--"

"Jesse," Axel says. It's the start of a point about something a _lot_ more frightening than solitary, but he loses the plot and laughs instead, runs his tongue around his mouth. Tastes red.

"What the fuck is Jesse going to do for you?" and maybe nothing, Axel knows he hasn't earned that, but the dismissal is enough for him to get his head up and manage a glare.

"James Jesse says he's Walker's father," Allen says, and it's a string of words that it maybe takes the guys a minute to parse.

There's a beat of silence.

"Jesse's in a fishtank. What's he gonna do?"

Axel shows his teeth, can taste the blood rimming them, how fucking _dare_ \--

"I've been in a room with Jesse," Allen says. "It's not worth the risk. And you know the guards and warden could use it as an excuse to come down on you." He still sounds calm. Axel knew Allen's voice didn't even shake when he was in the room with Jesse, but he thought it was the guy being scared stupid. It's not that. If he was scared right now, he wouldn't even be here. There's a whole fucking hallway for him to walk down and leave all this behind, and instead...

"Boys, come on. You don't care enough about hurting him to get yourselves in trouble."

Allen is right. The one who was holding Axel's arm gives it a twist and kicks him in the side as they leave, but they leave.

He huddles up against the wall, trying to figure out how much it actually hurts to breathe before he stands up, and Allen doesn't go anywhere. His hand twitches like he wants to either reach out to Axel or punch him--Axel can guess which--but he doesn't do either. Just stands there like Ward Cleaver in a fucking orange jumpsuit.

Axel gets his breath back and manages to shove himself upright against the wall. It's not so bad. He can stand if he's got something to lean against. He's wishing he had it in him to pay Allen back for that _can't you see he's just using you?_ line but he does not. Not now. The guy's old but he's big and looks solid, and Axel is still light-headed.

Allen walks him to the infirmary, slow enough that Axel doesn't have to hurry and can actually straighten up a little by the time they're halfway there, hardly even has one hand on the wall. He's a trustee; the doctor lets him stand by and hand stuff over while Axel's getting light shone in his eyes and stitches put in and X-rays run and all that shit that means needing to hold still and follow instructions.

He hates it. He's earned it. It's his fault, after all; he's the one who fucked up.

He's pretty sure Allen is part of the reason he gets to stay there overnight, and after a few hours of trying really hard not to dwell on horror movies about abandoned hospitals and crazy doctors he concludes that Allen is not going to somehow sneak in and stab him with a needle and he figures it out.

Allen doesn't _know_ Axel fucked up, thinks hurting him might cause trouble from Jesse. Probably just feels like trying to make sure Axel doesn't come after him for the things he said.

Axel's not an unreasonable guy. He decides he appreciates the gesture enough to wipe Allen's slate clean unless Jesse says different. He ever runs into the guy again, Allen won't have anything to worry about as long as he keeps his mouth shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from Tom Waits' "Fish In the Jailhouse"; like much of Waits, I wouldn't say it's my favourite song, but the music makes an impression.
> 
> Please let me know if there are any errors you catch! My monitor is being _very_ weird, and I'm not sure if I missed something on preview.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Axel needs to see his father.

They're not careless. But Axel has had nothing to do in the infirmary but pay attention to how they do things, and he's not sure what he wants to get out of there but he knows it can't be anything dangerous.

He's got a goal. Not exactly a plan, but still.

Jesse's back here because Axel fucked up. Axel could handle Jesse being angry at him, he thinks, he _could_ , and even if he couldn't it'd have to be better than the waiting. If Jesse needs to be mad at him, okay; Axel can take that, he's been hurt over things that matter less.

But right now Jesse isn't anything, because there's only silence, and Axel needs _something_. He can handle a little downtime, he was used to waiting for days between letters, although that was when he could find something else to do while he was waiting. Iron Heights is not high on diversions, and right now he doesn't even have any of the old letters to reread like he used to do on bad nights.

He needs to see Jesse again. He's starving.

No-one is going to _let_ that happen. He knows the term _legal stranger_ and it came up again at the hearing. He _understood_ it--on paper Axel Walker has no father and insisting that his dad is James Jesse makes no more or less difference than insisting it's Harrison Wells--but hearing someone else call James Jesse any kind of stranger to him still made sparkles of rage dance in his vision and his public defender went white for a minute at the look on his face. So he needs to do this on his own.

He knows he's not as smart as Jesse, doesn't think he can pull off the kind of trick that people won't catch until it's too late, but he knows what people think of a Trickster and he's pretty sure he can play that up even if he can't get his hands on anything sharp.

The blood glucose monitor is a tiny little thing, valueless; cheap plastic, no data connection, does less damage than Axel could do with his nails. But it has a teeny light and bits of it snap together with a slick click and it beeps. Scrape off the logo, crack the casing so the display flickers and there is room for wires (bits of a paperclip, technically) sticking out, and with a good smile and _utter_ assurance you can convince a guard who's maybe moving a little slow that something really scary will happen if you let go of the gadget that's jammed into his neck and beeping.

The guard is doing that thing where he wants to believe it'll be okay, so he believes Axel when Axel says all he wants is to see Jesse.

It _i_ _s_ the truth, but Axel wouldn't believe himself.

The guard can get into maximum security. But he swears he can't even get into the waiting room in Jesse's suite, so once they get to the door they need to get to, Axel has to let the guard call in. They'll have seen him on the cameras by then, he's sure, but that's okay. He just needs them to believe he'll kill the guard if he doesn't get to see Jesse.

When they tell Axel it'll take them half an hour to get someone down to open the glass and he tells them to fuck off he doesn't _care_ about that, it probably does a lot to convince them that this isn't a brilliant escape plan. Which is fine if it means they go along with it.

So they unlock the door.

Axel shoves the guard in ahead of him and goes inside.

His breath stops in his throat.

 _Jesse_.

Axel's never seen Jesse in his cell. Not in person. He's seen security footage, sure, but when it came to seeing it _in person_ he was--

He was a little afraid to.

Stupid idea, but he thought some trick of presentation might get to him, play with his head and fool him into seeing Jesse as just a cracked man, something sharp and dangerous but only human.

But he wears the cell like a throne room, and the glass is there to keep imperfect people out, and the worry that's been winching Axel's nerves into knots for days is gone. He's not wrong, he's not confused, he's _not_. Everything makes sense, everything is right.

Jesse must have heard the door open, but he's standing with his back to Axel, inspecting the wall of his own drawings. Axel swallows and starts to say his name, and then the guard apparently goes from don't-fight-they-won't-hurt-me fear into room-with-two-Tricksters panic and gets an elbow into Axel's stomach and it's a miserable close scuffle before Axel gets him down and kicks him a couple of times. The shoes you get in the Heights are six kinds of shit, he's sure he's hurting his feet more than he's hurting the guard, but he gets the guy down.

Well, shit, that is _definitely_ going to cut down on his timeline for staying here.

Knowing that gets him lurching closer to the glass and he can't breathe, Jesse's back is still to him and his stomach is in knots and _it was his fault_ , he suddenly afraid that he's used up his last shot at getting to see Jesse again and if he could have _thought_ he'd have come up with something better and they could have gotten out from here but he's not smart enough for that, he needed to know that there was still a reason to keep going before he could even start to plan that far ahead--

"I'm sorry," he says, and it comes out so thin. His chest is hitching and everything looks a little far away. That's just panic, Axel knows from panic. "I, I'm--"

Jesse turns around and everything Axel was going to say gets eclipsed. He falls forward and catches himself against the glass, hands slapping hard and breath knocked out of him. Jesse, Jesse, James Jesse, glorious and bright behind the glass and a grin like the light at the end of the tunnel, like something lurking in your closet at three o'clock in the morning. Perfect.

He can't tell if Jesse's shushing him or if it's only the sound of blood in his ears. But when Jesse says "It's good to see you" Axel feels like he's going to _float_.

"It should have worked, I would have bet my _life_ it worked--" and that is the kind of thing you _never_ say to James Jesse, they both know it, which is why Axel says it. Proof of devotion. Proof that whatever Jesse wants to do about it is okay with him.

Jesse comes up to the glass and casually puts his hand on it, near Axel's; Axel shudders and moves his own hand to mirror Jesse's, fingers stretched. He can't see the glass, not really, just his own fingers going white as they press against it. He's so _close_.

"You did fine, Axel." He's smiling, and Axel can feel his own mouth stretch into an answering grin. _Yes_. He's been afraid to smile properly before now. "I know you did well. My son couldn't do anything less. The Flash cheats, but we can do him one better. Just wait and see."

It's like light all through him, bright and warm. Axel's forgotten what that feels like, what it feels like to be _happy_. "Okay," he says softly. And he'd stand there until the prison fell to pieces around them if he had the chance, but there's no time, he knows there's no time, not enough and he has to take care of everything he can _right now_. "Are you okay? Are they-- no-one's hurting you? No-one's stupid enough to touch you, are they?" Even the _thought_ of it-- he'll kill them, he'll find a way--

"Axel," Jesse says, loving and chiding, and Axel laughs in relief. Of course Jesse's okay, of course they aren't hurting him, no-one is. People don't understand what a wonder James Jesse is, but they've at least got enough sense to not bully him. Axel was just so _scared_ , worried when he didn't need to. He's been there for anything Jesse wanted for ten years, and it couldn't always be much, but it was more than he could do inside. And he at least knew then what he was supposed to do. He had the letters. He had _Jesse_.

Jesse looks up, sharp as a knife, and Axel doesn't hear or see anything but he can read the expression. "We're nearly done here," Jesse says.

"Oh _no_ , dad, no no no..."

"I'll be in touch," Jesse says, leaning close. Axel nods and his head feels heavy and slow, and he tries to breathe deep but it's like there's mud in his lungs. Still. He can do this. It's been nearly half his life since he's gone this long without a letter from Jesse, it was driving him a little mad, but if he knows it's not gonna be forever he can do this.

"I can't breathe," he says. It's an apology, he's got _so much_ to apologize for, he's here with Jesse and he can't even stay _awake_ for it, he guesses they finally broke out sleeping gas or some such shit and he knows what's happening but he wanted it to last a little longer--

He's losing his balance, sagging flat against the glass, going to his knees but keeping his hand where it was, close as he can to his dad's, and the room's spinning, but Jesse's smiling. Jesse's laughing, and Axel hears _my boy_ , that rich slithering voice that's rough as a cat's tongue, as he tastes something like chalk dust and floral soap and then everything goes dark and sparkly and then just dark.

It's solitary after that. It's not so bad. Some days the food isn't edible--who can tell if the guards aren't big on the whole _bombs on children_ thing either, or if they're just pissy about the guy he used for a hostage--but he guesses they will not let him starve, and puts his hands to his head, and tells himself things to keep from drowning in the quiet, and remembers Jesse. His dad. His dad smiled at him.

Sometimes Axel presses his hand flat against the door and closes his eyes. Sometimes he's back outside Jesse's cell, hand against the glass, and Jesse's on the other side.

_You did fine, Axel. My son couldn't do anything less._

His dad isn't mad at him, it's okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Establishing paternity in Missouri is fairly straightforward if both parents cooperate (you will note Axel's mom does not seem to be in evidence), or if the child in question is under eighteen. Given Axel's reaction to hearing that Jesse was his father, I think it is reasonable to assume that he didn't know the identity of his father, and that whatever he may have daydreamed or hoped he did not draw any attention to the interaction between himself and Jesse by attempting to file paperwork.


	3. Marking Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is all of it. The feel of his heart creeping up into his mouth when he realizes he is not alone, the bruises, the boredom. The grey walls, the bars instead of doors, the thousand fucking miles of unending petty harassment. The lights on at six every morning, the lights in solitary that never go away. Memories of Jesse. The taste of cheap toothpaste, better than the food. Fourteen cents an hour and the smell of bleach, red raw skin around his nails. Coming inside from the yard to the stale smell of flat air and lurking mold and grime thick in cracks. The moment when the light goes out and it's been another day without a letter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Day in, day out. Leads into and covers the summer hiatus after S1 of _The Flash_.

They sic someone on him in the yard when he gets out of solitary, some green idiot who doesn't know better, can't tell the difference between friends encouraging you and bystanders egging you on for a show. Axel sees it coming--no-one's trying to get his attention, but he hears Jesse's name come up and it's not like he'll miss _that_ , and then he sees the looks getting tossed around. And then one of the guys egging the new kid on starts gently shuffling towards the guards.

Axel swears he remembers this kind of thing from school, honestly.

The new(er) guy is wider than Axel and a little bigger but he's slower. Axel is honestly just so glad to be _out_ he tells himself he doesn't even really mind the hits as long as he can get some in.

The guards _do_ come down on it, but by the time they're not distracted anymore, Axel is standing a good two yards clear of the guy watching him pick himself up.

"He fell," he says to one of the guards. He's grinning, can't help it. Spend... however long, he's not sure, in a concrete closet too small to run in and even bruises feel good.

"On what, your face?"

He keeps grinning. "What's wrong with my face?"

It is not believable. It doesn't matter. The scuffle is over, the guard doesn't care enough to pick one of them to send back into solitary, and it's not like anyone's going to _volunteer_ information when it's only for Axel Walker or the new guy (who is apparently pretty much of an idiot).

* * *

It really _is_ more like school than anything else, Axel tells himself. He's supposed to do pointless shit and no-one is supposed to hit him and technically a few people will object if they see it happening and if guards _do_ see it happening he might be getting blamed and if they don't then it--

It gets bad sometimes, but (he attributes this to rumours about Jesse and maybe some hangover from what Allen said) he's pretty sure no-one's trying to kill him. Not even a bunch of assholes who got caught could be this bad at killing people.

He'll probably be alive for a long time.

He can't go home, he can't sneak out, he's got no-one to hang out with, he misses his phone, the library sucks, he can't touch a computer, it'd take him a week to so much as afford a deck of cards at commissary and he'd have nothing to use it for but solitaire, there's never gonna be a weekend or a summer vacation and when he starts thinking about _never_ he starts to giggle and he wants to shake, but he tells himself it's like school.

* * *

He has a cellmate. Walton. Walton is short, but wide as an empty doorway and about as talkative as one. Walton doesn't say anything to him-- _anything_ \--except tell him to shut up after lights out or when Axel tries to start a conversation by commenting on the pictures Walton's got on the wall. (Not that Axel _started_ with that, but it's the only thing that gets a response.)

He keeps trying, though. It's not that he _likes_ the guy, it's that... he's _here_ , isn't he? Axel's here and he's talking and he's not imagining it. If someone else answers back, then it's real.

He gets thrown across the cell one night, hauled out of bed and wakes up skidding across the floor and cracks one wrist and the back of his head against the wall, sees stars in the dark. He gets his hands up but nothing comes at him and the thin catcalls from other cells are fading and Walton's climbing back into the top bunk.

"Wha' the hell?" He doesn't like the sound of it, thin and high and weak, shocked awake. His head feels cracked and the side of his face is scraped up and his nose and eyes are watering. He runs his fingers gingerly across everything that hurts, feels raw-skin stickiness on his face and back, blood in his hair, takes in a hiccupy breath.

"S-seriously, Walton, what the _fuck_?"

From across the corridor: " _Luvva_ _ **fuck**_ _, Walker, shut up or I'm gonna--_ "

He ignores the details and blinks up at Walton's silhouette. Between the darkness and his watering eyes he can't tell if the guy's looking at him, but he hears a flat _you wouldn't shut up_.

Axel manages a snort. You yell at people talking in their sleep. You throw pillows at them. Maybe you shove them.

You don't _throw them across a fucking room_.

He doesn't say any of that out loud because he doesn't want Walton to come back down out of his bunk.

There isn't a mirror in here and if there was he couldn't turn on the lights. He waits for his heart to settle a little and gets up carefully and goes back to bed. The blanket's on the floor; the sheet is still warm from where he was lying on it.

Axel thinks he could _maybe_ take Walton in a fight, if he got the drop on him. If he could get his head together and his hands would just stop shaking from the adrenaline. But if he starts a fight right now then either he ends up in solitary when the guards come by in the morning or he loses _really_ fucking badly, so he guesses he can let it go for right now.

He pulls the blanket up over himself and doesn't get back to sleep.

It's real, but he doesn't feel any better for knowing that.

* * *

Jesse survived Iron Heights. For decades.

_I knew you had the strength to fulfill my legacy._

This is that. This is part of that.

Axel has never had more to deal with than he could handle. Axel has never run into anything he couldn't handle if Jesse needed him to.

_Besides, it was in your blood._

Which is currently smeared down the side of his face, and pooling up into bruises under his skin. Most of it's still inside, though, and he can take a few bruises.

He'll be fine.

* * *

The yard shimmers in the soft heat of a Missouri summer, the hard dirt flicking the tiniest needle-shards of light back from bits of mica.

Sometimes there's a breeze, but not like today. Today the air stirs and then starts pulling towards Central, soft as static electricity but wasting no time. Axel swallows and tastes something like a bloody battery.

Guys on the yard are clustering a little, muttering, looking up at the sky which is being sucked clean and blue, even if it looks like a storm might be brewing on the horizon that the clouds are running towards. Axel mostly keeps an eye out to make sure no-one's gonna sneak up on him while the guards are distracted.

(They find out that night, Central managed to catch itself a freakshow upside-down tornado. Axel cares exactly as much as he needs to, which is mostly to notice that it's nice people have even more things to pay attention to that aren't cornering him.)

* * *

His family comes up less than you'd think, when people are trying to make him miserable or mad.

Mom's not _around_ , right? He can't call or write to her, doesn't even have pictures left, she just doesn't make a bump in anyone's _awareness_ of him. Other guys, they have pictures or tattoos or get letters or even _visits_ , and you pick it up. Walton's got a brother and two nephews. Parker's got an aunt. Pieste's got a sister taking care of his dogs. Stuff like that.

Axel's got very old memories, and no-one to share them with.

When it comes to Jesse--

There's nothing true anyone can say about Jesse that Axel will take as an insult.

Sometimes people say things that _aren't_ true, tell him Jesse doesn't give a shit about him, played him for a fool, _tricked_ him, and that gets to him. But he's learned that whoever the guards see throwing the first punch is usually the one to get in shit.

Everyone knows this. A lot of times there's no hitting. If there is, it's usually because Axel has managed to find _exactly_ the right words to make someone lose their temper, which gives him an excuse to hit back.

(Only hitting. He has a shiv now; he doesn't use it. He understands escalation very well, and if the spectre of Jesse keeps things down to a survivable level he is not going to push past it.)

He doesn't always manage to win, but he does okay.

Allen's usually in the infirmary when Axel gets hauled in. One time while Allen's getting the worst of the blood off, he says calmly "You know, Jesse'll probably be alright whether or not you get beaten up defending him."

Axel smiles, sweet and sharp even though it splits his lip a little wider, because he's heard what Allen's in for. "Does it confuse you? The devotion a son shows a _good_ father?"

Allen gives him the look Axel's gotten from pretty much every adult that didn't care enough about something to be actively pissed but was trying for the _I'm so disappointed_ face. Or at least if there's any difference between his look and all the others, Axel doesn't care enough to see it.

* * *

There are bruises. But then there were walls, and he doesn't _specifically_ remember whether or not he hit them, fell into them, ran into them, it's not worth paying attention to that kind of thing, you can let it all go.

He's pretty sure he's not forgetting anything important. He's coping. There are people who make his stomach jitter and his skin feel tight, and sometimes he knows what _specifically_ is putting him off and sometimes he doesn't, and either way he listens to his nerve endings. Iron Heights is not a place to be ignoring warnings.

If he's forgetting the details of something that happened, he decides not to remember.

* * *

He gets one letter. One.

It comes in one of the library books. It's neatly creased, sharply written, has a crayon drawing on the back that feels like the only real colour in the world.

There's a lot of red.

He hasn't forgotten how to read them. This one didn't really have much of a need for a cipher, but he guesses his dad wants him to keep in practice.

 _His dad wants..._ It feels so good to think that.

Axel reads it so often that the paper goes limp and the creases turn into raised fuzzy lines where the fibers of the paper are fraying. Paper to write back is easy; getting a pen into the cell so he can answer in something like privacy is not that hard. Jones, who handles the book cart, is an absolute fucking prick about sending a letter _back_ and Axel grits his teeth and manages a combination of _I'll owe you one_ out of one side of his mouth and _I'm sure he expected an answer_ out of the other and... It works. He thinks Jones would have taken a letter back anyway, if Jesse was expecting an answer, but it works.

But.

Another way Iron Heights is like his experience of school; if you're too happy about something, someone else tries to take it.

It's very fragile paper, by that point.

Axel loses his temper. The other guy is bigger than him and dangerous but he loses his temper. He gets _stupid_ , in a way he hasn't gotten in a while.

Infirmary, that time. Not solitary.

* * *

The mirrors in the bathrooms aren't real mirrors because real mirrors you could break. They're sheets of metal, dented in spots and dull in others.

Axel has stopped paying attention to them except to make sure he looks like he's coping after fights, because he doesn't exactly have a lot of fashion options. But he slips up one day, starts to see _himself_ instead of just what he's trying to signal.

One of his eyes is bloodshot, although the bruise underneath it is going down, and in the silvered haze of the bad reflection it looks like the blue of his eye is turning bruise-purple too. Like something is spoiling inside him and starting to seep out.

The mirror's blurry enough that he can't decide if he looks dead or old.

_It's a trick._

It's the metal, he decides. It's the light. Everything looks grey in here. Even bruise-purple is pretty much just another kind of gray.

He's fine.

* * *

Someone does decide to start mouthing off about Jesse--starts making jokes about Axel calling him _daddy_ \--and Axel just smiles the first day and smiles the second and on the third the guy gets too close to him in the cafeteria and Axel manages to do some _wonderful_ things to his face before the guards break it up.

Solitary, again.

But it's just for fifteen days and his food's mostly okay that time, and Axel guesses that the first time it... was probably the hostage thing? He isn't sure. When he thinks about it after, tries to compare it to his first run in, the memories are dim and cool. Like a lightbulb in a brownout, like coming to indoor shade out of a sunhaze.

* * *

This is all of it. The feel of his heart creeping up into his mouth when he realizes he is not alone, the bruises, the boredom. The grey walls, the bars instead of doors, the thousand fucking miles of unending petty harassment. The lights on at six every morning, the lights in solitary that never go away. Memories of Jesse. The taste of cheap toothpaste, better than the food. Fourteen cents an hour and the smell of bleach, red raw skin around his nails. Coming inside from the yard to the stale smell of flat air and lurking mold and grime thick in cracks. The moment when the light goes out and it's been another day without a letter.

This is all of it. He waits.


	4. Fingernail Grip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym.” ― Stephen King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Mildly Dubious Consent" tag added on the theory that Axel would quite likely not have gone there if he wasn't miserably lonely and desperate for contact; nonetheless, no coercion was involved.

They're building the new wing, and that mostly means a lot of blueskying crap about how the freaks will have it better no way man they'll have it worse. Axel watches ground outside the fences get broken and one of the tunnels he came through when he broke Jesse out--there's a _lot_ of old construction under some parts of Central and Keystone, even when you get away from the mines proper--get half filled in and then stuffed with some kind of cabling.

It makes him uneasy. He doesn't know _everything_ about Iron Heights, not even close, but he knows how and when it was built, something about spaces behind the walls, he knew how to get around under it. Most of that was still good, because they couldn't shut the whole place down and dig it up to fill everything in. The idea of an old way out--even if it used to be outside the walls and he and Jesse couldn't have gotten to it--not being _there_ anymore...

Everything slips away.

He gets another letter. That helps a little, but there still isn't a way _out_. He starts to think about how long Jesse was in here the first time before he started writing to Axel and he stops because that starts turning into _maybe he feels like taking ten years before starting on a plan_ and Axel can't _argue_  if that's what Jesse wants but he just doesn't want to put a number on things like that right now.

There's work, and he makes quiet note of what he could get if he needed it (but he doesn't take it because he doesn't have a plan and if he goes for it and someone notices he might not be able to get it later, and also if he isn't allowed to work his commissary account will get even thinner than it already is). There's time in the yard, if it doesn't rain. Sometimes there's the infirmary (less often, but less often is not never), and sometimes Allen is there, and even if they don't really have _conversations_ the guy at least says things that aren't _go there_ or _fuck you_ and maybe occasionally suggests a book from the library and they aren't 100% terrible. It's... okay. He will admit that talking to Allen is okay.

And then Allen gets a release, blows on out of there before the leaves really start turning, some glorious fucking story about a devoted son and the triumph of loyalty and everything going right for the family of a cop and Axel actually manages to do himself a little damage punching the wall and doesn't bother with the infirmary, sits on his bunk and snickers with the blood running down his fingers and thumb and wrist in sticky ribbons and fixes it himself. It's all a fucking _joke_.

Walton starts wheezing, and gets thinner and greyer, and Axel has not quite a month of sleeping through the night whether or not he talks in his sleep before they actually transfer Walton out for chemo or whatever and Axel gets a new cellmate. His name is Brays and he is not a bad guy. Exactly. Particularly. He shot a cop during a robbery, but the cop survived, and mostly he just wants to keep his head down and see about getting out.

Also he does not hit when Axel talks in his sleep.

Brays makes a move on him after a week and a half and by this point it's fall and the air outside smells like paper getting ready to burn and Axel is so _fucking_ lonely he's making sure he gets caught on the edges of other people's fights just so he can feel the doctor's hands on him when he gets patched up, so--

Whatever. Okay. _Okay_. It gets rid of that feeling like his skin is going to start bleeding and Brays doesn't act like he's putting anything over on Jesse and keeps his mouth shut about it and at least it's _something_.

(Plus Brays has someone topping up his commissary, and he doesn't exactly _share_ the cigarettes he swaps for but he's okay with not noticing when Axel filches some of them, so Axel has something to occasionally smoke and mostly trade.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slow chapter, I know, but I wanted to set it out. The next one ties in a little harder to S2 of the TV show.


	5. Calcination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Christmas, and Axel isn't where he needs to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set concurrently with season 2, episode 9 of _The Flash_.

Fall crumples into white ash and blows away and guys who aren't Axel are getting wrapped up in the holidays or sulking about them and then one night there's the storm of the motherfucking century and the wind's howling down the corridors and blowing over the cell doorways and everything smells like snow.

Come morning he hears that Mark Mardon took Jesse and when he understands it's true it feels like he lights up brighter than magnesium, hate so white-hot it could turn a man to ash before he had a chance to feel pain.

He doesn't know Mardon. He's heard things about him, sure—mean streak, went a round or two with the fucking Flash (which is cool), pulled an ace in the freak power draw. It was stuff to keep in mind if he ever ran into the guy, but it wasn't like Mardon really _mattered_.

He matters now.

It's not that Axel's possessive. He's never made a _claim_ on Jesse, would never question what he chose to do. But that doesn't mean he has any trouble hating some glorified fucking sparkplug-and-sprinkler for taking him away.

It's a bad day. Central has never felt so far.

There's lines at the phones and a little gossip, because a lot of guys are calling home or family—the Trickster's loose in Central City for Christmas, people worry—but no-one _knows_ anything until next morning, not inside. Axel spends the night staring at the ceiling and wondering what the fuck is going on and trying to figure out what he's supposed to do and by the time the lights go on in the morning he hasn't really slept.

No-one wants to watch anything but the news.

That thing with the Christmas tree and Santa and whatever, Central does it every year. Axel remembers. He doesn't know if they were filming the crowd for filler last night or if they just got someone out there when they saw lightning streaks and apparently Mardon _flying_ there, but there's footage.

Axel watches the footage with everyone else and he can't even laugh. Jesse so pleased, Jesse _applauding_ as Mardon's giving him something Axel never could, ice and wind and blue-not-yellow lightning taking that fucking scarlet freak to pieces _in front of him_ , and Jesse's got that _knife_ —

Axel's still seeing the screen but he's having a little trouble making sense of it, all the lights and the shiny street and red and red and the white banding on Jesse's Santa suit, crackles and blears and he closes his eyes, someone's talking over the scene but he can hear the cat-crackle of Jesse laughing as the microphone tries to pick it up from behind the squad cars.

And then. Firecracker noises, barely.

_"Was that you?"_

Closer to whoever's filming, a little clearer, _"N_ _o. —gut him already!"_ and you don't talk to him like that _how fucking dare—_

_"...uh-oh."_

_Dad_.

The lightning flares. There's no screaming. Jesse could have made there be screaming. The sound of sirens from the TV, and uncertain noise from the rest of the room that Axel just doesn't care about.

He doesn't need to watch the rest of it.

Mardon ends up in Iron Heights. Jesse ends up back there.

Axel's—

Axel wants to be feeling all the right things but he knows that sweet giddiness high in his stomach a little too well.

He's glad.

Not about Jesse being closer again, that only makes sense, but about Jesse not getting what he wanted from someone else. It's not that he wants Jesse to _fail_ , never that, it's only that he needs to be the one to help Jesse, he's _always_ been the one to help Jesse, it's how things _work_ , and he tries to tell himself that it's all part of being a good son but still:

He's glad that Jesse didn't get what he wanted, and for a week he can't look at himself, can't even think about himself.

Everyone figures he's upset about Jesse getting caught again. Axel lets it go. There isn't anyone he can explain it to.

There have been a couple times, _maybe_ , he hasn't been really pleased with himself, but he's never had to deal with it alone. Because there wasn't anything he couldn't have told Jesse before. There were things that weren't important enough to fit into a letter, but there has _never_ been—

He tries to burn it out with one of the cigarettes. Their burn is petty, grimy and orange-red at best, but the searing is an immediate present thing (as opposed to Jesse who he last saw on a TV screen, with Mark Mardon in the foreground of the fucking frame) and that's enough to drown out the gladness for a moment. He thinks about it, over and over, Jesse in his Santa suit tied to the lightpost with empty hands, and when he feels that sick giddy glad relief he presses the lit end down on his skin and concentrates on not making noise.

No-one needs to find out about this. He can handle solitary if his head's on straight (it isn't right now) but if they catch you seriously fucking yourself over you go to observation, which is solitary with less privacy and less room to move and no chance to think, and all of that is the last fucking thing he needs right now.

After the cigarette's used up he's light-headed and his heart is racing and his face is wet, but that horrible joy is mostly gone. When it comes back, late at night or over the next days, he digs his fingers into the healing blisters, pressure and the scratch of rough fabric, and that helps.

One of the burns festers. It doesn't put him back in the infirmary, but he needs to visit on the regular for a couple of weeks for antibiotics. The doctor looks at him funny for a minute but assumes someone else did it to him and the burns are a week old by then, no-one really cares enough to push and figure out who.

So mostly it's good. He's at a point where everything wrong with Christmas was just hating Mardon for not being smart enough, not listening to Jesse (because Jesse would have come up with a better plan), fucking things up when he was lucky enough to actually be working with James Jesse.

That's okay. He gets that, he's got a _lot_ of experience with people not appreciating James Jesse. He can deal with that.

Still.

There are a couple of things he'd like to do if he could get to Mardon, but the freaks don't mingle and everything he knows about Iron Heights comes from before the new wing. He's not sure what they've built to keep the freaks down, how it works, how the walls are put together and what it's like in there. He's made some guesses that he thinks are pretty good about how they've rebuilt Jesse's rooms, and around the time people's spring allergies start flaring up again and the mold is spreading under the paint he gets a letter that's got _some_ details about that in it—if you read it right, if you know which lines to fold it along and what letters to fill in along some of the blanks—that gives him a little more to go on.

But when it comes to that fucking freak, he doesn't have enough to even start. Even he knows it's stupid, a little kid's fantasies. Daydreaming about ways to get to him is just a way to unwind, it's not _planning_.

Axel's never needed to be the one planning. He had Jesse for that when it mattered, and mostly just shrugged and humoured other people when it didn't. He knows it's not what he's good at. That's okay.

He tells himself that it's okay. That his dad's back, and Jesse's always been the smarter one. Axel just keeps busy in the meantime, watches the burns heal over into scars and tries to keep track of everything he can so that when he knows what Jesse wants, he can figure out how to take care of it.

That's what's important. Not some strutting freak who screwed up Jesse's Christmas. What's important is that the next time his dad needs something, Axel will get to be the one to provide.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeling a little unwell, I'm afraid, so no particular comments today.


	6. Attenuation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things start to fade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leads into the summer hiatus after S2 of _The Flash_ ; the show follows Barry, yes, but I kind of liked the idea of slowing down and following up with a world where the Flash left by running back in time, and what happens when he's not there.

He's been in Iron Heights a year and it's raining.

He can't remember the last time he reached for a lightswitch. He's waiting by the phone just to hear people talk and when everyone else is done he calls the pawn shop he used to drop stuff at sometimes and the number's gone out of service. It rains in the yard one day and the smell of petrichor comes in and there's a wind blowing and the smell of deisel from somewhere and he thinks it smells like night air and then it takes him like five minutes to realize that that's not right, because he hasn't been outside after dark since spring last year and he doesn't really remember what air smells like at night anymore. He remembers _going out at night_ and now even before it gets dark he needs to be inside, up before dawn and everything is just walls and doors and grey paint and it feels like something in his gut is trying to grow a mouth and _scream_ —

He gets someone else to pick the fight, foul-mouthed clever little shit that he can be, and since the other guy _clearly_ started it and isn't someone the guards really like, he doesn't get solitary that time.

He's sitting in the infirmary waiting for a bored doctor to pronounce him safe to go back to his cell after a cursory eye exam to check for a concussion and he realizes that he _recognizes_ the way the paint is flaking on the wall, high up in the corner, and oh fucking hell he needs to get out.

That or see Jesse again.

(That or kill Mardon just so he can put the whole Christmas mess properly behind him, but then Mardon breaks out again, so he doesn't even have that to think about.)

He's not tired, it's just that everything is grey. He's not painfully hungry (he's hungry, but it's the worn kind of hunger that kicks in after a couple of months of technically-enough-to-live-on-and-anyway-let-them-use-the-commissary), but he's having trouble remembering what things taste like.

And then it's been a year since he's seen Jesse, even through the glass. A fucking _year_.

He hasn't forgotten Jesse smiling at him. He hasn't forgotten _my boy_. He wouldn't do that. But the thing about letters, they always came with days between, and it's more than days now— and that was always _okay_ before, but—

But sometimes he'll wake up at three in the morning and stare up at the dark and for a minute or two while he's drifting, not really awake yet—

—not even really two, just for a minute, _half_ a minute—

—Jesse won't be on his mind at all.

It feel like everything's fading.

It terrifies him. It's worse than how he felt after Christmas, because that was just bad but this is _nothing_. You can cut or burn out a bad feeling, if you try hard enough. He doesn't know how to burn caring back in, doesn't know why it's missing in those half-awake half-dreaming moments, and it feels like freefall.

He makes himself wonder if Jesse gets letters from anyone else.

He _likes_ wondering that, because being angry is easier than being afraid.

* * *

In summer, they start talking about how the Flash is gone. About how the lightning doesn't run along the streets anymore. Axel mostly thinks _good_ and then goes on to worrying about Jesse, how's Jesse feeling about this, what does he think? He knows it's nothing to do with his dad; Jesse could pull something off from inside Iron Heights if anyone could, but if he got rid of the Flash he wouldn't be _quiet_ about it.

The mood changes a bit, like people planning to get home from vacation, or getting ready to watch a sports team start playing again. No-one wants to really _bet_ on the Flash being gone, but some of the guys inside start making plans and talking to people. Low-key stuff, just for in-case.

Axel lets the conversations fade into the grey and picks carefully, hesitantly at his mental map of Iron Heights and waits for a letter.

And then Jesse's gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left, and it should hopefully be up sooner than the last one, by way of an apology for giving you another chapter in which not a lot happens and ending with something of a cliffhanger.


	7. The duty of every prisoner.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He stayed as long as Jesse was there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Uhm.
> 
> As mentioned in the notes for last chapter: this is a world in which the Flash is not currently present, because he ran away/back to Flashpoint. Given the circumstances which caused James Jesse to be even more not there, it is also a world which is diverging _more_ from canon. I apologize for not signposting this better. I am not as good as I should be about tags, and I'm not entirely sure if this is an AU (which so often seems to me to be used to indicate a different universe, rather than one in which something was changed during the summer hiatus, and it's not as if they always give us good recaps of what happens).
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

Jesse's gone Jesse's gone Jesse's clean and outright gone and no-one knows why. No-one knows _how_. The warden's got a trustee working in the scheduling room and he hears things and when the guy sees Axel coming for him he pretty much spills _everything_ which is to the good all around because no-one gets hurt and no-one gets put in solitary and Axel isn't interested in talking to anyone else so the guy keeps the value of his information.

Which amounts to this; Jesse is gone, and the security tapes show him just _vanishing_ , and everyone is upset enough about this that it probably isn't the warden or a handful of the guards killing him in his sleep and trying to cover it up.

Vanishing during the _day_ , with a speech, that he could believe. Just glitching out in the middle of the night, and then no word for a day, two days, _three_? No. No, no way, he does not believe it. James Jesse may sneak on occasion, but he does not _disappear_.

And he has to figure out what to do and the trouble is, he knows, Jesse was always the one with the ideas.

His nerves won't let him settle down and tune out the world, won't let him _think_ ; he's getting a really bad feeling about _everything_ , like he wasn't smart enough to get in the beginning.

Allen spoke up for him. That mattered a little. And then he made it into Jesse's cell and made it out again in one piece, and that mattered more, because it was James Jesse. That made people start to keep the family relationship in mind.

It's not that Jesse's gone. He was gone at Christmas.

It's that no-one's heard anything from him in news or gossip so people start to wonder if he might not come back.

Axel's gets that it's about Jesse, not him. It's like if Jesse left a flag planted in the yard, first guy to take it down would get bragging rights.

Flipside, apparently a couple of people on the outside want to talk to him, so the guards actually _interrupt_ something that was not going so well, which is a thing that Axel is almost surprised by because that happens but not a _lot_ , like only...

He's trying to count up how many times it's happened while the hallways are going past but he keeps getting lost at two, and his head's ringing like it's just been slammed into a car door. And someone's shining a light like a knife in his eyes and when he snarls and tries to shove it away he realizes one hand's cuffed to the edge of an exam table.

Fucking hell, the infirmary _again_. But the cuffs aren't standard for when he gets beat up, so that's a little interesting. He sits up while his head clears and the doctor tells the cops he should be fine to talk and then steps out.

When Axel hears their names he blinks and gets it together a little, grins at the older of them.

"Like Iris West?" The girl in the red dress from the mayor's party; he thinks he might have remembered her even if Jesse hadn't paid attention to her. "Oh, hey, how's _she_ doing?" West looks _pissed_ , and Axel feels a little better even if his head still hurts, smiles wider. Spread the mood.

No-one talks to him for his own sake, of course. It's about Jesse. That's okay. They come at it from the aren't-you-mad-he-left-you angle first, which Axel _gets_ , but is still offended by. But he's missed having someone to talk to, so he strings it along for a while.

"If we find him," West points out, "he'll be back in here," and it stops being any kind of fun. For a minute Axel feels sick like he hasn't since Christmas.

He's pretty sure West notices, and that just makes it worse. There's a moment and then the guy starts again, almost gently.

"Shouldn't _someone_ get to know where he is?"

If Axel has ever wanted so badly to kill someone just so that they'd fucking _shut up_ he cannot remember it. He twists his fingers around the chain of the cuffs and hangs on, feels the links dig in and cut off circulation. The cuffs aren't the problem, not really. Give him something to work the lock with and an uninterrupted dozen seconds, he could deal with that. The problem is two cops and they're both watching him and the doors and the cameras and the walls and the whole fucking grimy bulk of Iron Heights mouldering slowly around him while he's stuck in its gut and Jesse _isn't here_ —

His throat hurts but he hikes on a grin, cracks his neck.

"Okay," he says, soft and sing-song. It's not what he wants to say, what he wants to say is _fuck right the hell off_ , but he's running on a gut feeling and a vague idea right now and he thinks it matters that the cops care more about him than the guards, so he wants to keep them on the hook. "Come back—" He glances away for a second, scans the room, paint damp and grimy, floor tiles pale with bleach and the drain bleeding rust stains. "Come back tomorrow. After noon. You give me the details on what he's done then and I'll tell you where to find him."

"He hasn't done anything," the other cop says.

Axel widens his grin. "Tomorrow."

They look worried at that, and it helps.

* * *

Once they leave it's back to the routine. He's practically a regular at the infirmary now. It's not like he gets _ignored_ , exactly, but if there's nothing dangerous in the room people turn their backs for half a minute.

You can do a lot in half a minute if you've figured out what you need to do.

He gets let out after dinner, gets put back in his cell and stares at the rust stains on his fingers and his cracked nails. Half his brain is running giddy and giggling, and half of it is just trying to forget everything he needs to do until the next time he needs to do something.

He settles it by realizing that West is right. Someone should know where Jesse is. Someone should be watching him, someone should know him.

Axel's always been there to do that. He can do it again.

He curls up around the thought and gets to sleep.

* * *

Getting beat on yesterday does not get him out of work, which he figured on.

Iron Heights doesn't have _janitors_. Janitors would cost dollars an hour. Inmates cost fourteen cents, and it all goes back to the commissary anyway.

Axel doesn't get to clean the infirmary. But he knows who does, and the security is mostly about making sure no-one takes cleaning supplies out to use for something else. It's not really focussed on making sure they aren't used to spike each other so that when someone starts _using_ them, things get mixed together that maybe shouldn't.

He's nowhere near the infirmary. Doesn't hear a thing.

Lunch gossip: they shut down the infirmary and are checking it for bombs. No, they shut down the whole wing. They are not checking for bombs until the gas clears or they can identify it. There was just an accident. There was a bomb. (Axel keeps his mouth shut about the difference between vigorous chemical reactions and, you know, actual _bombs_.) There was just an accident. That can't happen by accident, the guy was using a fucking mop, you can't blow up a room with a _mop_ —

(If you're mopping with mislabelled drain cleaner instead of a bleach solution, there's a _spectacular_ reaction when you wring out the mop and the wastewater hits the part of the bucket that's been spread with ammonium hydroxide.)

Someone jokes in the way that is not really joking but just seeing if they can float an idea that maybe it was Walker.

Axel gives the guy a look which is mostly offended and maybe a little frightened. "Fuck you, Sinclair, I was supposed to be _in_ there this morning."

That's apparently a good argument. The conversation drifts on.

By the time he's eaten and can hit the yard, the weather is being the kind of rain that has almost turned down into being a heavy fog. Axel goes out, spots Brays leaning against the wall and wanders over. Brays will not have his back or anything like that, but he knows that and it's okay and at least the guy isn't likely to start something.

"You were talking in your sleep," Brays says after a minute.

"Yeah?" Axel keeps his shoulders down, watching the yard. "I say anything neat?"

"You were laughing."

Axel grins. "I was thinking about getting out. Makes me happy."

Brays shakes his head and looks like he wants to ask a question but doesn't say anything. Axel figures he is going to need to go pick a fight in a minute, but for now he's just running over things in his head one last time, keeping an eye out for someone who fits.

The guards are talking to someone at the yard door. Axel is on the other side of Brays, and cannot get a really good look, but he is ninety percent sure it is one of the cops.

He was not expecting them to show up this soon after noon. He figured he'd have a little more time. The guard is looking around, but between the rain and Brays being between them, he hasn't spotted Axel yet. Call it a minute at most until he does, and then Axel gets hauled back to talk to them, and it'll be a lot harder to start a fight with a guard walking _towards_ him—

Fuck. _Fuck_.

He liked Brays. Not like they were _friends_ , but at least the guy wasn't an asshole and got rid of that feeling like he was so lonely his skin was going to start bleeding.

But. Priorities.

"Hey," he says, poking Brays so the guy turns towards him a bit. "So about that getting out. Want me to send you a postcard? Top up your commissary?" Brays looks like he wants to roll his eyes, and doesn't in case it's not a joke. Axel puts a little croon in his voice and smirks. "Maybe say hi to the girl who does that for you?"

Brays straightens up and Axel doesn't move back. He has always been able to pick a fight if he needs to.

"The fuck did you say, Walker?" In that tone that means _you've got one chance to back down_.

It's probably a good thing they weren't friends.

"I see your pictures, she's cute. And come on, Brays, you're fun." He reaches out to touch the guy's face and laughs when he gets swatted at, pulls back before it connects. "How bad could _she_ be?"

"Listen, you little shit—"

"No, no, hey, no, you're getting me wrong," he says, grinning and holding up his hands. He takes a step back and Brays follows, takes the collar of Axel's shirt loosely in hand. Axel can see the burn start to bank at _you're getting me wrong_ , perfect setup, and he gives Brays the sharpest grin he's got. "I wouldn't bring _Jesse_ , see, it'd just be me—"

Brays roars and decks him. Axel hooks his ankle and they both go down, Brays on top. He claws at the guy's eyes with one hand just to keep him busy, lets another punch land, he can handle seeing stars and people will be coming fast he needs to get Brays' shiv—

It's most of a spoon, ground down to an edge on a cell wall. You don't really get better than that inside. But he gets the taped-up handle in hand, and drives it between his own ribs like he's trying to put it straight down into the ground beneath him, aiming (he hopes) low enough to miss his heart and high enough to miss his gut.

He gets it in and starts— screaming or laughing, he really isn't fucking sure, it hurts, he knew some of that was coming but it _really fucking hurts_ , and he lets go of the handle and starts trying to get Brays off him in earnest.

Rain's hitting his face and he can see daylight. He's definitely laughing now, more than screaming, that's good. He can't get up and when he tries to curl onto his side something _pulls_ and he shrieks out more laughter. The guards are pulling him up off the ground and his ribs are running wet, his shirt is sticking to his side and back. Something in his mouth is tickling like whipped cream, sour as iron, and he spits to discover that the blood's all frothy. Neat.

He tries to pull the knife out—about eighty percent sure that that is a bad idea but fucking hell it _hurts_ —and then they're dragging him away. Brays is yelling something about how he didn't do it.

You hear a _lot_ of people say they didn't do it, in Iron Heights. Brays sounds less convincing than Henry Allen ever did, and Axel wasn't sure he ever believed Allen.

One of the guards is saying _awh fuck, get him to the_ and then stopping because it's not like anyone's using the infirmary right now. Warden probably wouldn't care about dumping him there and letting him clot up, but he told the cops he'd have answers later, and since right now he isn't really doing anything except coughing up blood and hiccupping, they are interested in getting him fixed.

He realizes he's saying Jesse's name like his dad could hear him and shuts up so he can concentrate on breathing, which is getting a little hard.

He can hear one of them calling for an ambulance.

Jesse would have come up with something better, he guesses, but Axel's doing what he can.

* * *

The ambulance is cold but it's bright and clean. Scissor-clack and his shirt's off and Axel keeps expecting to see his breath and keeps not doing it and his head is spinning a little and someone is saying something about tachycardia and they're shoving a needle in his arm but whatever it is isn't putting him out.

There's a cop in there too. Fucking hell. Not West.

Then there's a needle in his chest, like a proper syringe but huge, and the EMT's pulling _back_ on the plunger, which he doesn't get but she's just pulling out air and he wants to say that hey, he _needs_ that, you can't just go sucking out his lungs but what he says instead is _Allen_ , weird as fuck, and then she gets the needle out and it's easier to breathe again.

He looks around. The needle in his arm is attached to a bag full of blood. The EMT's taping something like plastic wrap onto his side and talking about sucking chest wounds and it takes a minute but he understands that air was getting in where it wasn't supposed to.

"You can do that?" His head still feels fuzzy and he's back to looking at the ceiling.

"Helps if you play a lot of contact sports."

Axel thinks of the last year and laughs, and it turns into a cough, and he tries to sit up and can't and he's trying to swallow and trying not to choke and then the woman is undoing the strap across his chest and the cop's stepping forward as he curls up a little and oh it fucking hurts but at least he can breathe.

"Put that back on!"

"He's cuffed down—"

"Put it back! You— get down—" and the cop's reaching for his gun and Axel jerks back as much as he can, holds up the hand that isn't cuffed down and _cringes_ , and the EMT's stepping between him and the cop.

" _Put that away!_ "

"Listen, lady—"

Axel decides he likes her. He wasn't planning on this exactly but she and the cop are shouting at each other so he curls in on himself and yanks the needle out of his arm and starts working on the cuffs. The driver is starting to slow down, too, and calling back something about what the hell is going on back there, and the cop is yelling instructions, and—

Scratches and a click, and the handcuff slips open.

The cop spots it and Axel sees the gun clearing the holster and lunges to grab the guy's wrist, yank it back across the gurney and snap the cuff shut around it.

The cop pulls the trigger and the bullet goes into the floor.

The driver hits the brakes _really_ fucking hard and Axel skids right off the end of the gurney, slams into the divider between the driver and the rest of the ambulance and hits the floor and scrambles up onto hands and knees. The EMT's on the floor staring at him with huge eyes and the cop's trying to turn around but he's fallen across the gurney and can't actually turn his hand to point the gun at Axel because of the cuffs and they've basically stopped and he can hear the driver yelling something to dispatch—

Axel gets the back of the ambulance open.

Year and more of a yard that doesn't go anywhere and a bunch of hallways, and the street and sidewalks are fucking _huge_.

The rain's coming down harder and there are cars but not really people and all the sounds are different. It's not people muttering and snoring and sometimes hitting each other, it's not occasional echoing curses. The air is loud, it's full of wind and traffic and the traffic lights are glowing behind the rain and there's a whole fucking _city_ out there and somewhere in it is James Jesse.

Axel runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Questions, comments, requests for clarification welcome (but not required, I know comments are a pain to get out sometimes), here or on [Tumblr](https://peppersandcats.tumblr.com/).
> 
> (Yes, there's more. Yes, I know at least some of what happens in future fics. Yes, I am aware that Axel is actually really _frighteningly_ smart and his constant "Jesse has the ideas" is not a reflection of who is _capable_ of having ideas. Yes, my search history right now looks like someone trying to emulate the Mad Bomber What Bombs At Midnight Baby.)
> 
> The chapter title is a shout-out to Le Guin's quote about [the duty of an imprisoned soldier to escape](http://www.thetolkienist.com/2014/01/03/not-a-tolkien-quote-fantasy-is-escapist-and-that-is-its-glory/) (which is _not_ a Tolkein quote, but a discussion and elaboration of something Tolkein said).
> 
> Thank you for reading. Happy October.


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